Environmental Science A26 - La dolce vita

Institution:

Wheaton College - Massachusetts

Subject:

Description:

?ddio, Dolce Vita" -"Goodbye to the SweLife"-says the headline on the cover of theNovember 26, 2005 issue of The Economist. Inside, a photograph on the first page shows elegant couples sitting at night at white-clothed tables in the soft lights and warm colors of an Italian piazza. Behind them, written on an awning in green script, is the name of the restaurant: Caffè Dolce Vita Ristorante. "At first blush, life in Italy still seems sweet enough," the article begins. "The countryside isstunning, the historic cities beautiful, the cultural treasures amazing, and the food and wine more wonderful than ever." By most standards, Italians are wealthy and long-lived, their families cohesive, and their town centers mostly free of the all-night drunken behavior seen in some other countries. "Yet beneath this sweet surface, many things have turned sour," Italy's slow economic growth,high cost of living, and high unemployment-especially among young people (four out of ten Italians between the ages of 30 and 35 live at home with their parents-a phenomenon that analysts attribute more to the difficulty people that age have finding work than to the legendary closeness of the Italian family. La dolce vita has disappeared in the Italy of the 21st century, the article concludes-a decline that parallels that of Venice toward the end of the 18th century. What Venice is now, The Economist says, is "little more than a tourist attraction,"however beguiling. Could this become the fate of Italy as a whole How is it that the title of a film Federico Fellini made nearly a half century ago can still evoke such a powerful image of the sweet life That the idea of la dolce vita is so widely recognized that it can serve all these years later as the governing metaphor of a detailed 16-page analysis of the economic and political state of contemporary Italy in a financial weekly read around the globe The myth of la dolce vita has beguiled visitors to Italy long before Federico Fellini used it for the title of his 1959 film. Seen through the lens of la dolce vita, Italy appears to be a land perfectly attuned to human nature and a sweet life of the senses. This is the la dolce vita that lures pilgrims to Italy where they hope to learn the art of living and the secret of happiness. Fellini's La Dolce Vita presents a different view of "the sweet life"; it is the sweetness of decay. "wanted to put the thermometer to a sick world," Fellini said, "to expose a glamorous but empty life of hedonism, consumerism, and personal destruction." The myth of la dolce vita continues to be powerful and alluring in 2006, and in our seminar we will examine the contradictions and controversies about la dolce vita presented in a number of Italian and American films and books. This seminar is part of a two- or three-course Connection Conx 23008, Italian Culture, Language and Society, which connects the First Year Seminar, Art History 102 or 202, and Italian 200. (David Vogler)

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

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Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

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Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.wheatoncollege.edu

Phone Number:

(508) 285-7722

Regional Accreditation:

New England Association of Schools and Colleges

Calendar System:

Semester

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